or opinion that it caused to be
entertained "of its strength and of its capacity." Of its gross
violation of law and justice, one of the most striking instances was
that of the execution of Marshal Ney, after Waterloo, and the Duc de
Richelieu, Louis XVIII's minister of foreign affairs,--whom the latest
historical researches seem to combine to elevate, and of whom even
Pasquier was an admirer,--here appears in the ignoble _role_ of judge
and accuser combined. Scarcely was he settled in the Tuileries again
when the new king proceeded to draw up a list of eighteen citizens and
eighteen superior officers to be proscribed, though in so doing he
formally violated the articles of the capitulation of Paris, which
provided that no citizen or soldier was to be prosecuted for having
taken part in the preceding events. The presidency of the council of war
which was to try, and condemn, "the bravest of the brave," was offered
to the eldest of the marshals, Moncey, Duc de Conegliano. He declined
it, in an indignant letter to the king, as "sanctioning an
assassination," and was imprisoned for three months in a fortress for
disobedience of orders. By a majority of five votes against two, the
council, in fact, declared itself incompetent, and Ney, with a sigh of
relief, exclaimed: "You see, _ces b ... la_ would have shot me like a
rabbit."

He rejoiced too soon; the Duc de Richelieu made a furious speech before
the Chamber of Peers in which he openly demanded the condemnation of the
marshal; in the _acte d'accusation_, read before this new court, "the
truth was so outrageously abused and mutilated that it was justly
characterized as a masterpiece of hatred." In vain his defenders
demonstrated that this prosecution was a violation of the solemn
engagements made by the Allies _in the name of the king_; Davout and his
chief-of-staff, General Guilleminot, deposed that they would have
"delivered battle," instead of capitulating, had it not been for article
12 of this capitulation, in which an amnesty for all persons was
expressly stipulated; they were peremptorily silenced, and at nine
o'clock the next morning the marshal was shot by his old comrades in
arms in the grand alley of the garden of the Luxembourg. A recent
monograph by M. Henri Leyret, from which we draw these details, quotes
the remark of a foreigner who was present at this execution: "The French
act as if they had neither history nor posterity."

During the ten years of the